1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printer for dissolving a solid ink to a liquefied ink and then recording record information by using the liquefied ink, and an information recording method using the printer.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is a printer for dissolving a solid ink to a liquefied ink and then performing a recording operation by using the liquefied ink. This kind of printer using the solid ink has such a merit that the utilization of the solid ink makes the maintenance easier and that the re-solidification of the ink on a record sheet reduces the bleeding of the ink to thereby perform the recording operation with a high image quality.
The method of actually recording by using the dissolved ink may include, for example, a method of using a record head of ink jet type. If using this method, it is possible to obtain the record result with the higher image quality.
In the above mentioned printer, it is typical that, while the record head is moved in a main scan direction of a record sheet, the record sheet is transported to a sub-scan direction to thereby perform the 2-dimensional recording operation. The solid ink is supplied to the record head by dropping the solid ink retained in an ink retainer section into an ink dissolving section disposed at the record bead. Then, the recording operation is typically performed such that the supplied solid ink is heated and the thus dissolved ink is thermally maintained so as to keep it in the liquefied state.
A common heater heated by a direct current is used as a heater for dissolving the dropped solid ink and as a heater for thermally maintaining the liquefied ink while maintaining the liquefied state.
Typically, a heat quantity required to dissolve the solid ink is extremely larger than that required to keep the dissolved ink in the liquefied state. Thus, if the respective heating operations are performed by the common heater, it takes a long time to convert the solid ink into the liquefied state, which results in a problem that the recording operation is not performed for that long time.
In order to solve this problem, it may be considered to use one heater to which the direct current is applied when keeping the ink in the liquefied state, and to use another heater to which an alternative current having a high electric power is applied, in addition to the one heater to which the direct current is applied, so as to quickly dissolve the solid ink when dissolving the solid ink.
However, the alternative current is not used for the thermally maintaining operation, in the above mentioned method of using both of the direct current and the alternative current (in order to reduce the electric power consumption for the printer as a whole). Thus, it is necessary to control so as to apply the alternative current only when the solid ink is supplied.
However, in a case of performing a speedy recording operation, it is difficult to control the timing of applying the alternative current. Moreover, since an alternative current having a large electric power is applied, it is impossible to use a switch with a high switching speed, such as a semiconductor switch and the like. This results in that it is extremely difficult to control so as to apply the alternative current only at a desired timing, which is a first problem.
On the other hand, in the above mentioned printer, when the solid ink is supplied to the record head by dropping the solid ink retained in the ink retainer section into the ink dissolving section disposed at the record head, the supplied solid ink is heated and dissolved at the position where it is supplied, so as to be used for the recording operation.
However, in a case that the supplied solid ink is heated while the record head is located at the position where the solid ink is supplied to the ink dissolving section, the heat for the heating operation is conducted to the ink retainer section located above the ink dissolving section, which causes the unused solid ink retained therein to be softened. This softened solid ink may be possibly stuck to the ink retainer section. This results in that it may be difficult to smoothly supply the solid ink to the ink dissolving section, which is a second problem.